The best ways to buy wine in Toronto

Unionized LCBO workers are preparing to walk off the job on July 5, which prompts a few questions: Should I start squirrelling away sangiovese? Stocking up on summer cans? Where will I get my wine?

Luckily for thirsty Torontonians, the city is lush with fancy bottle shops and bodegas that stock your new favourite whites, rosés and reds. There are breezy cafés with well-stocked wine shelves. There are snazzy bottle shops for fancy bottles. There are hip bars with excellent to-go options. And some of them even deliver. Here are our favourites.

Trinity Market This hybrid store and snack bar is stocked with all sorts of treats. There’s Cheese Boutique charcuterie, pies from Gaucho and Patty King, and fresh sourdough loaves from Blackbird. There’s pizza from Noce, both by the slice and the pie. Most importantly, the 500-square-foot space stocks dozens and dozens of bottles of wine. Most are low intervention, many are local, and all run the gamut of sparkling, white, orange, rose and red.

Grape Witches Calling Grape Witches just a wine shop is a massive understatement. It’s a wine bar where you can perch with a good glass, either inside the shop or on the groovy patio. It’s an education and event space where curious oenophiles can enroll in a class or two. And it’s an expansive online and IRL bottle shop with a keen focus on biodynamic, natural and small producers from around the globe. There’s something for every price point and freakiness level, plus a tiered wine club for bottles sent right to your door.

Revel Cider Guelph-based cider wizard Tariq Ahmed is constantly conjuring up ciders and wines made with Ontario florals and botanicals. His range is vast—there are cans of apple cider fermented with wild yeast and bottles of things like Mirabelle, a strawberry and lemon verbena cider. If you’re headed out that way—it’s a short detour from the Elora Gorge—there’s a full bottle shop and bar that makes for a stellar pit stop. For GTA residents, orders over $50 are delivered for free.

Wine Online Wine Online mirrors the ease and selection of the LCBO, with hundreds of bottles sourced from the world’s premier wine regions. Big and brooding bordeaux, crisp whites from Chablis, and Italy’s preeminent producers are all name-checked. Or, for budget bottles, just scroll through the vast under-$25 section. Orders of twelve bottles or more get free shipping.

Paradise Grapevine You have three options here. First, you can stop by Paradise Grapevine’s Bloor West bar and bottle shop for some fun, likely new-to-you bottles from small-scale producers. Highlights include a roster of grower champagne, frequent drops of older bottles from the cellar and skin-contact wines. Or you can swing by the Geary location, visit their winery and pick out something from their own line of vins de soif, skin-contact wines and cans of chuggable wine-based seltzers. Alternatively, you can browse online—Paradise Grapevine offers Ontario-wide shipping and same-day delivery for Toronto residents.

The Living Vine The province’s biggest organic and biodynamic wine importer stocks over 150 producers, with abundant burgundies and bordeaux alongside wines from Slovakia, Slovenia, Greece and Czechia. There are plenty of hip and hazy orange wines as well as elegant varieties made with sustainability in mind. Shop by the case or join one of their monthly wine clubs.

Deep End Bottle Shop Behind Doc’s Green Door Lounge, a newish but already beloved Junction bar, is a bottle shop—the Deep End—that stocks a rainbow wall of wines from small-but-mighty producers. Pop in and pick up a bottle or stay a while and try a glass on the patio or at their Edward Hopper–esque bar.

Bossanova Wine Shop Conveniently located a short haul from High Park—picnickers, pay attention—Bossanova is a dedicated bottle shop run by two seasoned professionals: Ben Plisky-Somers, a sommelier, and Dan Grant, a beer steward. Wines here are industry darlings: elegant valpolicellas, cool-kid wines from the Canary Islands, and craft beers from Italy, Belgium and beyond. Shipping is available across Ontario.

Loop Line For your next grocery run, Loop Line is located across the street from a massive Loblaws and down the street from Fiesta Farms. And there are plenty of everyday provisions: nice bottles under $40 and cans of local cocktails and wines. For more lavish affairs, the shop is particularly great at stocking coveted and highly baller bottles—gems from Barbaresco, natural wine icons, California legends and Burgundy premiers crus.

Sommelier Factory
This downtown wine bar’s Richmond Street location makes it prime for impromptu stops—grabbing a glass after work, popping in for pre-show drinks or picking up a bottle for a home-cooked dinner. The somm-run store has plenty of hidden gems on its shelves, including older-vintage small-producer champagnes and wildly good wines at weekday prices. (They also run beginner to expert wine classes for those who want to learn more about what they’re consuming.)

Bottega Volo Bar Volo is sacred ground for Toronto beer nerds, and those looking to extend their enthusiasm beyond the bar can stop into Volo’s Little Italy bottle shop and bodega tucked inside the lobby of the Royal Cinema. There’s an impressive list of beer as well as biodynamic and natural wines and provisions from around the world, including cheeses, chorizo, preserved mussels and candies.

Happy Coffee and Wine This low-key shop nails both the day drinks (good espresso) and the night ones (good wine) along with a never-boring menu of small plates. The focus is on small-producer wines with relatable descriptors: their house wine is a white-red blend made in collaboration with Trail Estates that tastes like “cherry vape cloud, sweet sage, grenadine and cocoa.” The back patio is an excellent place to hang out, and the inside has a swath of bottles and ample space to linger.

Charlie’s Burgers Through this secretive supper club’s wine arm, you can purchase bottles and cases from their online website or opt in to their monthly wine club. None of these wines are available in the LCBO, and a subscription gets you all sorts of perks, like access to CB events, deals at the Cheese Boutique and waived corkage fees at select Toronto restaurants.